


Our Variable Star

by onstraysod



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Dark Romance, Deeply obsessed, F/M, Jyn is either deeply in love, Or she's dealing with some serious emotional issues, Possibly all three, You Decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 06:46:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: She supplied the Rebel Alliance with the information they needed to destroy the Death Star. Now there is something that Jyn Erso wants from the Rebellion, a one-of-a-kind reward: a place on a distant moon, a trophy on her wall.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ennaih (aquandrian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/gifts).



> Several lifetimes ago, ennaih prompted me to write a Jynnic version of "Sleeping Beauty," with either Jyn or Krennic in the titular role. I was going to go with something more traditional when I woke one night with this image in my head and I knew that I had to write it. Apologies for taking so long to do so. :)

The base was embraced in a sepulchral twilight, picturesque but cold. The moon had but a thin atmosphere and the system’s single sun was far distant, its glow in the sky amounting to no more than a slight diffusion of violet light against the velvety blackness. Night was discerned from day only by the rising of the moon’s own small satellites, five of them hanging in an arc over the crater where the complex hunkered, its transparisteel walls glistening with lights, studded with rectenna arrays.

It was so remote, this barren rock with its oxygen-poor atmosphere and its canopy of stars, that it was guaranteed to attract no Imperial notice. It was not a military base at all, per se, though it was crucial to the Rebellion: a supply depot, packed with munitions and rations and replacement parts, with a hangar full of ships in various states of repair. But because of its situation, and the need for all personnel to be on hand at the bases closer to the war, the Rebellion could only afford to keep a skeleton crew on the moon to oversee the depot. A dozen droids of various descriptions, and one human overseer, alone on the cold, desolate moon.

She had always rebelled, but she was not a Rebel. Not when she had accepted the mission, not now that it was done. She had no rank and, when one had been offered in gratitude for services rendered, she had refused it. But Mon Mothma could not sanctify the risks that had been taken, the sacrifices made, the success achieved except by offering some kind of reward. So she had offered credits: enough to buy a sleek ship and a life of anonymity on some Outer Rim world, enough to buy an apartment in one of Coruscant’s most fashionable buildings if her fancy ran in that direction.

But Jyn Erso wanted neither. In the short space of time in which it had taken her to infiltrate the Empire and steal the plans for the weapon -- her actions leading to the spectacular ball of fire that had rained bits of superheated metal down on Yavin IV for weeks -- she had become a very different person. Gone was the runner, the miscreant, the vengeful daughter; gone the anger, the restlessness, the hunger for splattered blood. She wanted privacy, a space apart to claim and protect, a calm after the fiery storm. She wanted an apartment on that cold, twilit moon, one that belonged to her alone and for perpetuity, until the system was gobbled up by its distant sun.

It was a strange place to wish to live, and surprise was evident on Mon Mothma’s face when the request was made, but she acquiesced readily enough. She had sensed, after all, that this instrument of war she had set in motion had malfunctioned somewhere along the line; that despite the success of the mission, some wires had gotten crossed somewhere behind those large hazel eyes. Jyn’s silence, her stillness, the distant expression that stole over her features as if her thoughts were trapped in some other place, some other moment: all pointed to a soldier undone by the trauma of their survival. Mon Mothma had seen it many times before, the accumulated toll of kill or be killed, though this was different somehow: the warmth that diffused Jyn’s cheeks in those times of distraction, the small secret smile. Perhaps it was best to ship her off to the moon base where her corrupted programming could do no harm to the cause or to herself. She had served her purpose, after all.

“There’s one other thing,” Jyn had suddenly said.

Here was a request that Mon Mothma was even less prepared for, and her initial inclination was to refuse it. It was unhealthy; unbecoming to the virtues for which Rebels fought and died. But then Jyn wasn’t a Rebel: she was little more than a paid mercenary, and besides - the thing had already been done, done before Mon Mothma could have prevented it: a group of Rebels gone rogue, seeking some measure of vengeance for all the evils the Empire had inflicted, in a manner the Empire itself would have grudgingly approved. There was a dangerous glint in Jyn Erso’s eyes as she waited for an answer, a glint that spelled out in Mothma’s mind words like sabotage and treachery, and she remembered who this small woman was that faced her across the command table, who her father had been, her capacity for violence and all the things she knew. And suddenly Mothma wanted nothing more than to rid herself of this malfunctioning weapon; to wash her hands of the woman and that obscene thing, and so she had agreed.

Jyn arrived first on the moon, settled in to her spartan apartment, acclimatizing herself to the hush and the twilight and the solitude that even the servant droids seemed loathe to intrude upon. She made a few alterations to her rooms, hanging up a few odds and ends she had accumulated during her years of running from planet to planet, outpost to ship: insignificant things that had caught her eye along the way. A painting of a nebula made of colored sand, a strangely tinted seashell, a homespun rug from a Rodian market stall. But the wall in her bedroom, the one facing her bed, she left empty, open -- for that was where it would go, in pride of place, and she brought in a droid to prepare the space with heavy-duty bracketing and a line of recessed lights in the ceiling above.

A week later it came on a cargo ship, packed in a nondescript crate. Droids unloaded it, droids unpacked it -- smart move on Mothma’s part, Jyn thought with a smile, for droids couldn’t care less about the foibles of humans and they wouldn’t gossip. The droids hefted it into its vertical place and it thudded to rest in its brackets, suspended black and menacing in the half-light of the small glow-lamps. And then when the droids departed and the apartment lay again soft beneath the weight of its soundproofed silence, Jyn climbed atop the blankets of her bed, leaned back against a stack of pillows, and stared. Stared at her prize, stared at her reward, stared at her one-of-a-kind, priceless piece of art.

She hadn’t been present when it had happened on Scarif, busy at that moment locating her father in the maze of an Imperial detention facility. But she had learned all the details later, heard about the furious debate that had erupted over what to do with the handful of high-ranking Imperials they had taken captive. Bodhi had argued for a blaster bolt to each head, saving them the risk of a rescue attempt, while Cassian had countered that they must be made to stand trial for their crimes, forgetting that there wasn’t a court on Coruscant - or any other world - that was brave or impartial enough to convict them. It was K-2SO that had come up with the solution, a postponement of any final disposition suggested by the nature of the very building in which they stood:

A carbon freezing facility.

Seized like flies in amber, each Imperial officer had been packed away in crates marked with the phoenix symbol of the Rebel Alliance and an alpha-numeric label, transported to a cruiser bound to the base on Yavin IV. Where the others were now Jyn neither knew nor cared, but GE-487-0-OK was here, on the cold remote moon, hanging safe on her bedroom wall. She took her time, drinking in the sight, letting her eyes follow the black line of the carbon freezing casket up from where the tips of his boots protruded from the hardened black sludge. Up to the life support panel, indicator lights blinking normally, monitoring the vital signs of a heart still beating, a brain in hibernation beneath the carbon coating, the immobile shell. To the hands, one limp at his side, the other resting on his chest, clutching the hem of his duster, partially pulling the garment over his chest and leg as if, in the chill blast of the freezing, he had reached for some protection, some warmth. His face was turned slightly to one side, lips pressed into a thin disapproving line, eyelids closed on those fierce blue orbs as if disdaining to look at the mechanism of his downfall, or the scum who stood at the controls.

Director Orson Krennic, frozen in carbonite, attached to Jyn Erso’s wall like a biological specimen pinned to a board, a living specimen: inert, neutralized, impotent. Stunning. Cape and tunic and black gloves caught in static folds, flesh as fixed as duracrete. It took Jyn’s breath away, this living sculpture: the beauty and cold perfection of his lines and angles, made immobile for her leisurely admiration, made captive to her sight.

It was wrong, perverse, somewhat obscene, the things Krennic’s state of suspended animation provoked Jyn to do. She would wake in the middle of the night just to look at him, floating at the end of her bed in a special stream of illumination, a man only half created, a new god emerging from the black primordial matter between the stars. She would dream of him, vivid dreams of waking to find him standing over her, disrobing and sliding naked into the bed at her side, or nightmares where all they had once shared was forgotten and he fought his way out of the carbonite to put a leather-gloved hand tight around her sleeping throat. She would lay awake and let her hand wander to her breasts, between her thighs, and she would moan his name as she pleasured herself, as she looked at his deaf, frozen form through her fluttering eyelids. She would stand just before him and undress slowly, a striptease baring every inch of herself, giddy with the thought that he could neither see nor grasp her. And everyday, she touched him, a ritual performed morning and night. She would smooth her hands over the solid contours of his body. Trace the gloved fingers gripping the edge of the duster, the biceps rigid beneath the tunic sleeves, the line of muscle in his throat flexed by the turn of his head. She would caress the surface of his thighs in the resin-hard jodhpurs, the boots a dull black encased in the carbon, the rank plaque stripped of its color and meaning, twelve black squares upon his chest. Standing on a stool, she would bring her face to his, her lips and fingertips following the line of his nose, the carbon-fixed creases on his brow, the shell of his ear, the strands and tufts of silver brown hair turned black and blasted down upon his cheeks and forehead by the rush of cold steam. And she would kiss him, mouth tasting the cold metallic dullness as she pressed her lips to his cheek, his jawbone, his chest and shoulder, his clenched hand. Down she would kiss — to the buckle of his belt, his thighs and knees, the toes of his boots, until she was on the floor, prostrated before him, tears in her eyes and wet on her cheeks, torn between the euphoria of power and the desire that made her weak.

It thrilled her, almost as much as gazing on him, the consideration of how long she would keep him in that state. She needed the time to find herself again, to determine whether this desire belonged to Jyn Erso or to the creature she had made herself into in order to steal the Death Star plans. In the end, it hardly mattered. Jyn Erso or not, she was what she was, she knew what she wanted. In the middle of one night, the crescent of five proto-moons arching high above the base, she slipped out of her bed and went to the life support panel, and with shaking fingers she entered the code.

The carbon dissipated quickly, withdrawing first from the center of his body, melting into nothingness. Krennic crumpled forward and Jyn caught him in her arms, lowering him gently to the floor. He began to tremble violently, the shock of his body now released from it unnatural stasis, and Jyn cradled him against her, holding his head to her breast. He coughed and gasped, air burning its way into his lungs, and his shaking hands scrabbled out around him, gloved fingers grasping at the silken cloth of her sleepwear, scraping over her bare legs.

“Where am I?” he stammered, only a trace of the cold command she was used to in his hoarse voice.

“Shhh. Shhh. You’re safe.” She cooed the words against his hair, damp with the vaporized moisture of the carbon, and she stroked his cheeks and pressed kisses to his brow like a mother comforting a child roused from a nightmare. “You’re free of the carbonite, but you’re suffering the effects of the hibernation.”

“I can’t see--" His blue eyes pivoted blindly, seeking out the direction of her voice, fixing on a place on her left cheek.

“It’s temporary,” she said quickly, her heart aching to see this cruel, powerful man reduced to such a state of fear, and she put her lips to his eyelids, his brows, touched the golden lashes that rimmed them, so fragile and soft. “It will pass, I promise. And in the meantime I will take care of you -- Orson.”

He turned his head slightly and she saw the realization dawn, passing slowly across his features. One hand reached out, fumbling against her shoulder, the falling tendrils of her hair. “Jyn?”

“Yes.” She smiled though he couldn’t see it, smiled and took his face in her hands. “Yes. You’re safe now and we’re together, and neither the Empire nor the Rebellion can ever separate us again.”

Krennic clung to her and Jyn warmed him with her body, wrapping her tiny form around his tall frame as best she could, So many months had passed and she had forgotten his scent, but when she pressed her face to his hair, his cheek, his neck, she could smell only the metallic chemicals of the carbonite. So she helped him to his feet and, holding him by both hands, she led him to the fresher, filled the sunken bathing pool with warm water. Into the water she sprinkled the petals of a rare flower that grew only in the southern hemisphere of Naboo, an indulgence she had procured in anticipation of this moment, and when the bath was prepared she took off his clothes: piece by piece, slowly and reverently, a priestess removing the ceremonial cloths from a sacred idol at the end of a holy festival. She drew the gloves from his shaking hands, and kissed his fingers. She unclasped the duster, unfastened the tunic, lifted the grey tank he wore beneath it gently over his head, wrapping her arms around his naked torso as he shivered, resting her head between his shoulder blades. She sat him on the edge of the pool and pulled off his boots, loosened his jodhpurs. And when he was naked, she undressed herself and stood before him, and though he still could not see her, she took his trembling left hand and pressed it to her bare breast, slid it across her stomach: so he would know.

She eased him into the warm water, guided him down to lay back between her thighs, and he rested his head on her shoulder as she washed him, running a cloth over his chest and stomach and arms, anointing his head with the fragrant perfume of the petals. She kissed the line of his jaw, his ear, the side of his head, and setting the cloth aside she used her hands, caressing away the rigidity of his muscles after their long immobility, soothing the tremors until they grew less severe. For hours they remained in the bathing pool, and in Jyn's imagination it was like an embryonic pod, a warm, sheltered sphere from which they would emerge together, cleansed and fused into one. 

She would never surrender him again, her trophy. She had lost him once, allowed him to slip from her sight; she would not permit it to happen a second time. No one else would lay claim to him: not Mothma or Vader, not Palpatine or all the generals of the Alliance, and if they sent even Cassian to reason with her, her brother in arms, she would defend what was hers at the point of a blaster, she would build her own space station out of scrapped Rebellion fighters and malfunctioning droids, and shatter any world that threatened to take him away.

He was hers, a prize fairly won, a treasure paid for with fear and blood and the sacrifice of lives. She would tend him with the same care a crippled old Trandoshan showed the heads mounted on his wall, recalling as he surveyed each kill the thrill of the hunt. She would find that same thrill in every line of muscle in his back and arms and thighs, in every crease on his face and every freckle dotting his alabaster skin. She would survey this conquered territory, making a map, cataloging every feature in her mind, savoring the taste of his streams, the immensity of his swollen peak. And he would let go of all he’d known before, every wicked ambition, every machination, and take her as his everything, the pinnacle of all his schemes, the triumph of all his desires. They would cling to one another on this barren moon, complete in each other, a system unto themselves.

Jyn believed this. She had to believe it. There was nothing else left for them: the spent Rebellion weapon, the failed Imperial mastermind. The peoples of the galaxy were ranked against them, and the cold stars didn’t care. The lives of two damaged humans had no impact on their eternal gleam.

So she would remind him of the passion they had shared before the explosion, a passion no less real and intense because she had claimed a different name. And if Krennic resisted -- if his sleeping mind had carried through his hibernation anger at her treachery, if he was unable to separate his own self from the Empire she despised -- no matter. He was marooned on a desolate island in the middle of those pitiless stars, and she would make him love her, make him need her, make him desperate for the warmth of her body, the wetness of her lips, the sound of her voice curved around the syllables of his name, just as he had been before.

“Orson,” she whispered into his ear, brushing her fingers over a freckled shoulder, dividing and mingling droplets of water, wet skin against wet skin. “Let’s go to bed.”

Entangled naked beneath dry sheets, Jyn felt every lingering tremor as she held his body, as she stroked and soothed and murmured to him, this bastion of the Empire, vulnerable and numbed in her arms. Gradually he warmed and stilled and, after a time, he turned to her in the low blue light of the bedroom and laid his hand against her face. Those eyes like distant main sequence stars, cold brilliance in the blackness of space, focused clear upon her and she knew he had regained himself, his sight and his cunning; knew that their existence on the forlorn moon teetered on this moment, her life beginning or ending on this touch.

The kiss he gave her was like a star exploding, a new world being born.


End file.
